MILFORD — As the Milford High School Building Committee begins refining wants and needs, one of the bigger decisions — aside from the budget — will be whether or not to include the pool.
During its meeting on Wednesday, June 3, committee Chairman Jonathan Bruce brought up the issue of “decoupling” the pool from the building project; the pool would be renovated as a separate, town project.
“The reason to build a pool as a separate project, is that the MSBA [Mass. School Building Authority] is participating with the funding of a new school, and they have a clear policy that a pool is not a reimbursable expense,” he said. “Not being reimbursable, although certainly quite significant, is not the only issue. If we keep the pool as part of the project, it has to be a renovation of the existing pool, and therefore a new building has to be sited and configured around the pool’s current footprint notwithstanding that there might be better options on the site. There are also significant energy code type matters that a pool will impact globally at the site, not just proximate to the pool itself.”…